A Condensed Trip

This was originally for a contest held by jmurch. It's also the first thing I have completed writing on my typewriter!

Submitted:Jul 15, 2012
Reads: 8
Comments: 2
Likes: 1

One trip
down the forsaken rabbit's hole. One burning, spiraling trip and
then, surface. Light breaking through trees like nature's
wrought-iron prison bars holding back the sun. We are the sun.
Chained behind shadows cast from boughs of oak and elm but every
so often, we break free and become what we had initially set out
to be: transcendental.

I can't
remember how I got there. A dimly lit chamber on the corner of
Empire and Walnut. There was a fish tank in the wall. All the
fish were dead. I think they had probably been gold at some
point; however, the grey had seeped in and splotched the scales
that make bluegills jealous. I lit a smoke, "So how much can I
get for 45 bucks?"

"An
eighth. That should be enough for the first time user." Said some
burly, throwback from a lost era where electric guitar and
mullets were king. I wanted the return of that era. Or maybe one
prior to it. Who knows truly what I was looking for in those
stems and caps that rested in that Class X felony baggy. The
biggest crimes have often been committed in dimly lit garages I
think.

Two
glasses of orange juice and a stomach churning amount of dried
fungus later and I was immersed in the universe. I was nature and
life and I felt pertinent and vivid. There was the rush of
turbulent wind on my eardrums and I realized my limbs were no
long connected for I was a head. Everything had been dyed or
washed out depending. The trees were dead here like the fish.
They had turned monotone with neon outlines of red and orange,
symbols of their decay while a simple black and white military
coat one of my companions wore had burst into tie-dye and
rainbows. I wish there were more men in military jackets so I
could laugh at them in their rainbows and ask which country they
were going to threaten and who they were going to hide from
now?

I can
only imagine that the sound of their gunfire at my laughter would
have sounded like the swift hammer of justice to some or the
sound of Tianemen Square to others, depending. At least my
oppressors would have a side. It would have been defined and
chosen unlike this asshole playing his guitar for peace rather
than conviction in front of me.

He was a
pariah. Privileged white kid in a barely urban environment
singing of equality. Who honestly believes in that? Are we all
equal in more than a biological sense? I had regressed and
receded into a state of pure delusional thought. Maybe that's the
best place for all of us. The double helix shape of DNA was
discovered while on acid. Maybe this could mean something too.

Pulling
myself out of the abyss of thought a voice rang "Aren't you
ridiculous? Aren't we all? Are you okay with that?"